Clap on. Clap off.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while. I finally got a new phone to replace the old Motorola I had. It’s a Blackberry Pearl (or 8100).

Anyway, I ordered it through Amazon, which is a great place to look for cell phone deals if you’re willing to switch carriers. We were, since we had moved from Detroit and needed new phone numbers. (Just a friendly reminder, you can order your snazzy new phone through jaydreyer.com…just click the Store link at the top of the page! C’mon!)

Thoughts on the phone: I like it. It’s small, and it does a bunch of stuff – calendar, email, to-do’s, mp3, movies, takes pictures, games, etc. It syncs with my Outlook at work, which is a huge time saver for me. I don’t do corporate email on it – who wants to be bugged non stop about work? But I connect it to my notebook in the morning and sync up my calendar, tasks and address book, which is all I really want it to do.

Google has some cool apps you can download for free so I get gmail, google maps and google search. Yahoo also has a new client you can download that lets me check out news, sports, even my Flickr photos. Very cool.

It’s got a built in mp3 player so I can listen to tunes. Plus, it can play videos so I’ve watched a few old movies on my bus rides into work. You can also surf the web, which I always enjoy.

I debated between a Motorola Q and the Blackberry Pearl. Eventually I added in the T-Mobile Dash and the BlackJack, but I went with the Pearl. Not sure if I made the right decision or not, but I haven’t had any problems with the phone as far as re-sets, errors, etc. goes. I think if you’re truly a Windows kind of guy, you might want to stick with the Windows based phones, but I can’t complain about the Blackberry. It’s a nice size and does a lot of cool things. The smart-type functionality takes a little getting used to, as it doesn’t have a full QWERTY keyboard, but it doesn’t cause me any trouble.